The company has undergone significant changes in recent years in order to “stay ahead of the game”, in a highly competitive market. In 1996, Richard Edward identified an opportunity to diversify its product offering and developed a new line of card based products for games and promotions.

 

The success of Richard Edward lies in its philosophy of continuous improvement, enabling the company to maintain and develop its competitive advantages.

 

Louisa Moger, Sales and Marketing Director, said: “The printing industry is an extremely competitive and cut-throat market. Companies constantly strive to look for new innovative methods to improve their processes and core competencies to maintain their competitive advantage”.

 

In its quest to identify further innovative improvements Richard Edward worked with Simlab to develop a simulation model of their print processes.

 

 

A simulation model is a powerful way of representing and analysing the dynamic behaviour of business operations using computer software. Models can be animated over a period of time, allowing the analyst to measure the performance of the business operations, highlight where problems are occurring and understand how problems might be solved. Changes can be made to the model in order to try out new ideas. For example a company can evaluate the impact of buying new equipment or hiring more staff before committing to making a significant investment.

 

 

In Richard Edward’s case the company wanted to understand the impact proposed changes would have on other areas of their operations. They also wanted to investigate if it would be possible to use the model to help in the day-to-day scheduling of production.

 

Louisa said: “The project has helped Richard Edward develop a better understanding of the improvements that can be made to the production process. We experimented with different shift cycles, different numbers of staff and equipment through a series of dialogs. The major benefit of simulation models are that they provide you with the capability to experiment with new and innovative ideas without causing disruption to the “real life” production system and without the risk of getting it wrong”.

 

“The timing of this project was also very fortuitous. We are currently pitching for a new high value, low margin contract and this project has helped us ascertain the feasibility of accepting the work”.